Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Death Cafe comes to Tottenham!
Death Cafe is a worldwide movement, with the simple aim of getting people together to talk about death over coffee and cake. The subject matter is whatever people bring: worries about your own death or other people's, coping with loss, feelings about funerals - anything death-related. It's not counselling, and not an information session (though we plan one of those for the New Year), just ordinary people sharing thoughts.
The next Death Cafe Tottenham is on Monday 27 November, 7.0 - 9.0pm, at Blighty India Cafe, 266 High Road, N15 4AJ. Entry is free, but we hope people will spend a bit in the cafe, as Blighty are letting us use the space without charge. Jane Morgan and I, who run Death Cafe Tottenham, are both experienced funeral celebrants (ie we conduct secular funerals), and I've also worked as an undertaker.
Message me here if you have any questions; or register via our Facebook events page: https://www.facebook.com/events/279328145923187/
Hope to see you on 27th!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by EMC2 on
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You are ever so weirdly private about death, I think we treat it as part of life.
When my father died 15 odd years ago in Newry hospital on a Friday afternoon, we had him the 26 miles home that evening. And when we arrived at our lane, there were about 5 neighbours waiting, to see him home, and God knows how they knew. He died on a Friday afternoon and my siblings & I spent that afternoon in the shops buying food & wine for the wake, which carried on from that Friday night through to Sunday. He was buried on a very wet Monday morning.
That weekend, another elderly neighbour died and we of course went to her wake. She was laid out in an open coffin in a bedroom. We were commiserating with her 94 year old sister in her kitchen when her 7/8 year old granddaughter came rushing down from the bedroom. She exclaimed that she'd been alone with her (grand) aunt and the wind had come through the window and blown over the mass cards unto the coffin and given her such a shock...
It seems to me you could live in England for a thousand years and never see that. But I might be wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Ruth Valentine on
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I think you're right. Except in other migrant communities.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I think attitudes are also quite regional. I’m from the north east and both of my grandparents, who died when I was young, were laid out in open coffins in our front parlour the night before their respective funerals so people could sit, have a talk to them and something to eat and drink.. With my mam and dad we did the same but in a funeral parlour, a bit of a gathering of relatives and friends. When we arranged this for my brother in a funeral parlour in Surrey the staff seemed a bit surprised.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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When our mother died - far too young - the place filled up with people I didn't want to see and others I didn't know. Many of them hadn't seen her either at home or in hospital when she went through a long illness. (Not all. Some friends and relatives had been wonderfully supportive. )
A couple of sensitive souls were yakking about a cousin's baby, born near the same time as our mother's death. One of them said: 'the Lord gives and the Lord takes away'. I quietly decided I would try to avoid all this in future.
I didn't succeed of course. There were funerals of people I liked and loved very much. And sometimes the feelings and prayers and songs and readings seemed fitting and truthful.
And sometimes there were funny jokes - though probably not funny to the immediate family who were hurting. Someone told us about a funeral he'd recently attended where a relative shovelling the spadeful of earth sent his mobile phone onto the top of the coffin. It had rung, he said.
At another funeral the weather changed abruptly. Rain poured. Women's high heels sliced into muddy paths. People without umbrellas grumbled about flattened hair. A cousin of Zena's - a wonderfully talented man who later died in a tragic accident - said "Darling, think beach".
Death is part of death. Think beach.
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At my Dad's funeral a group of his old mates from work turned up with the local NUM branch banner. Immediate family were over the moon as they knew how much it would have meant to him whereas my Auntie Rachel tutted about a display like that in a church. We also had the usual professional funeral goers who tended to turn up at all the ones held on our estate. The lure of ham and pease pudding baps at Town End Farm Working Mens' club afterwards seemed irresistible to some.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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A Death Cafe discussion could help some people to realise that these sort of conflicts are best worked out before you get too sick, or too dead, to have any input into the event. I can't even decide whether to be cremated or have a woodland burial, a more recent possibility since I went with friends to an open day at a burial wood in Epping, changing my mind about having my ashes chucked off Waterloo bridge. Thinking birch.
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Nice variation, Pam. I imagine Zena's cousin might have laughed out loud.
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Me
- Body left to medical science for the amusement of third year medical students
- What’s left in a wheelie bin
- Big shindig for mates from the money saved by not having a funeral.
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Permalink Reply by Andy on
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I hope they put it in the right bin. I'm sick to death of finding body parts in my recycling.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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To be clear, Liz, it's not the Death Café movement I find gruesome: only those biscuits
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Permalink Reply by tigha on
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Very good work. So important and yes it’s amazing how scared people are to talk about it. I’m very tempted to come just so I can steal one of your fantastic biscuits. Love it. But that’s prob my sick nurse,s humour
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Do come, Tigha! It would be good to have a nurse's perspective.
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